endeavor to be

Community

This world we live in is as wonderful as it is difficult.

Stop, look around, it’s amazing we have come so far! Looking out upon a busy street, so many things are going right, so much consciousness exists for things to flow so, and so effortlessly too. It’s a bustle and a hustle, and it holds itself together. There’s many types of glue that keep things moving, there’s as many things holding the world together as there is perception. The primary thing keeping order is love. Love has a bad rep these days, and that’s silly.

RVA Love

Love isn’t just giving the child the toy he’s crying for.

Love is the discipline that teaches the child that the world isn’t going to be fair.

Love is doing it gently and firmly. Love teaches us to accept that the world isn’t going to drop down and give us what we want. That’s the harder love. That’s tough love. It seems to me that lately we’ve forgotten that sort of love, we prefer the love that always remembers to get us a birthday card, love that gives us gifts. And while that’s love too, it’s only one side of the coin. We should not forget that love is firm too, sure we try, but the world will always get around to reminding us otherwise. The world is only forgiving when we learn from it.

Community is love. It surrounds us in every moment, and guides us; our interactions with this world else contain little pointers, little lessons. It takes bravery to participate, but the love is there either way. Some people, maybe ones we really care about, aren’t going to give us cards for our birthdays. That’s what we’re afraid of. It’s not easy to be a member of a true community, one has to realize and accept others limitations and our own. There’s no one gallivanting around telling us everything we want will come true. There’s no one telling us we’re the only special one. A community is unique in itself, it’s members are special in their interactions with other’s, not stand alone.

The goal of Human Endeavors is to facilitate community, to provide a place for individuals to explore themselves and support others. The most helpful thing I can offer is to find something that provides space. Being able to slow down enables us to learn from all the small pointers around us. When we don’t have space to breathe we miss life’s lessons. One could say we familiarize ourselves with the repetitive prodding of the world and create a sort of companion of misery. It’s really quite unfortunate when this happens. It’s not better than nothing.

At the heart of community is love, it is the binding agent. It takes place over and over and extends limitlessly…

RVA Community

…far beyond our awareness. Slowing down with to communicate with life is a natural way to extend ourselves and doing so it is possible to more greatly appreciate wonder amidst difficulty. Human endeavors facilitates such slowing down with personal training, yoga and massage. These are three unique tools, and Human Endeavors asks it’s clients to participate in them with compassion towards the self. This participation has the power to turn any activity into a mindful practice. Sometimes it is the compassion of tough love, other times it is soft. This is the practice, of bravely being with ourselves now, and this is why meditation is highly encouraged as a terrific supplement. We can simultaneously be hard and gentle, loving and unique.